Evanescent
by Lavender Flame
Summary: (Before the Music Dies Legacy) They all had something that broke them into little pieces. The Gamemakers, and their memories that they'd rather forget.
1. Learn How to Live

**Author's Note: Basically a prequel follow-up for **_**To Describe a Gamemaker/**_**"iridescent"**_**. **_**Will be similarly eight chapters, one per character. Please review with your thoughts!**

**Trigger Warnings: Violence, Death, Mentions of Divorce, Nightmares**

* * *

_**Before the Music Dies Legacy**_

_Evanescent_

(They all had something that broke them into little pieces. The Gamemakers, and their memories that they'd rather forget.)

* * *

**Chapter One: Learn How to Live**

_Mistina Ann "Misty" Freeweather, Year 362, District Four_

The motor-mouthed girl with the long golden curls, those striking sea-green eyes, framed by a tan face, laughing. _Angel. Angelfish Korrall. _The witty boy with the same eyes and darker tan, shorter, straighter hair. _Neptune._ _Neptune James Korrall. _The two cousins' faces and names were forever imprinted in Misty's memory.

She met them when she was sixteen, young once, at the beach of District Four, on one of her parents' business trips. She wandered carefully through the sand, waves lapping at the ground around her, curious blue eyes trained on the shell-dusted shore.

And, lost in her thoughts, mentally composing a poem about the froth of those waves, she ran straight into Neptune—although she didn't know his name then—and was startled into taking a few steps back, looking up at him. "Sorry," she said. "Are you all right?" He looked like it.

The boy offered a wry smile. "Well, it's not as if _you _hurt much."

Misty wasn't sure what to say to that. After a moment, she responded: "I'll take that as a yes." She gave a wry smile of her own.

"NEPTUNE JAMES KORRALL!" a girl screamed from across the beach. "Are you _flirting _with her?!" Suddenly she appeared right next to them. "Hi!" she said to Misty, and shook her hand enthusiastically. "I'm Angel. Or Angelfish. But mostly just Angel. Neptune here is my cousin. Nice to meet you."

"Good to meet you, too—" Misty got in, before Angel continued:

"—You're not from around here, are you? You don't really look like it. What's your name, anyway?"

"Misty," she supplied. "Yes; I am from the Capitol. My parents are here on a business trip for the family company."

"With a name like that, you _could _be from around here," said Neptune.

"How long are you here for?" Angel cut in again.

"Almost a week more."

"Great, then, you have time to have dinner with us. Come on." Angel started to drag her along by the hand, and Misty decided to go along with it, even as Neptune rolled his eyes at his cousin, going with them.

The Korrall family all had an extra dose of personality.

**. . . . .**

The days started to pass too quickly in a happy blur. Lazy swims, shell-hunting, sandcastles, sports, sunset-watching, ice cream cones, fishing, walks, talking, Angel's braided rope friendship bracelets.

_"Have you ever just thrown your hands up and let yourself live before?" _Neptune asked her once, the sea brushing up to their ankles in the sunset.

_ "No. I haven't. But it's nice."_

Angel and Neptune were unlike anyone she'd ever met in her life. They didn't mind that she was from the Capitol. They didn't mind any of her quirks. And they were so simple in their own way—children, happy, loving. Misty had found two new best friends, no matter what the horribly short time span was.

The last day was saddening, but she promised to write letters, and see them whenever she came back.

And she went back to the old reality of the city.

**. . . . .**

They all wrote letters constantly for more than a year. She went back to District Four twice and saw them on every day.

Now she was seventeen, and so were they. Misty watched the Reapings at home—One, Two, Three—and could find at least Angel's face in the crowd of District Four.

_"Neptune Korrall!"_

"No!" Misty cried suddenly at the television, alert, now an inch from the screen. She tried to control her breathing, searching Neptune's face with odd franticness, his features enlarged on the screen, for some sign that it wasn't really him.

But it was.

And _no one volunteered. _Neptune and Angel weren't Careers. But the crowd wouldn't have known that.

_"And now for the girls!"_

Misty couldn't even listen, feeling shaky and sick to her stomach.

_"I VOLUNTEER—!"_

She would know that voice anywhere.

_Oh, no. Not Angel. Please, not Angel, too. Please. This isn't happening, you can't do this, take me instead._

But Angel volunteered.

Misty shut off the Reapings after that, staring numbly into space from the floor in front of the television.

**. . . . .**

She never saw them live in the Capitol. But she watched everything. They were crowd-pleasers in the ceremonies, but didn't do well in training. She memorized their interviews just to be able to hear their voices….

_"Of course, I had to volunteer. Neptune and I do everything together. Even the Games." Even death._

_ "No, we're not in the Career pack. Angel and I will be just fine on our own." No, you really won't be._

Misty didn't sleep that night. Neither did the Korrall family.

**. . . . .**

They got through the bloodbath. Somehow. Thank Panem, they were _smart, _and they grabbed good supplies and ran. Misty could almost breathe. But someone hit Angel in the arm with a knife, and she, of course, couldn't take that kind of pain.

Misty tried to learn everything she could of the arena. It was a blue-tinged sparse jungle, spindly trees and vines, a lot of water, more open plains on the edge with the Cornucopia. A circle of the sea closed it all in. The setting would have made a beautiful poem.

The Korrall cousins hid and tended to Angel's stab wound.

Misty thought that they were as safe as they could be, for now—but it was a small arena, and the trees were short. She sighed.

**. . . . .**

For days, _other_ tributes fought, huge blue bird-mutts swooped down from the trees (terrifying Misty), a few of the lakes were poisoned, and the temperature skyrocketed.

Angel got worse—weak, feverish, a shell of the young, healthy, giggling girl Misty once knew. She tried to sponsor them, but the prices went up by the day, especially what Angel needed. The Capitol wanted to get rid of the "boring" Careers.

Misty wished they could see Angel and Neptune's potential. She'd never felt so helpless before. She never would again.

**. . . . .**

Angelfish Korrall died at 4:14 AM early on the fifth day of the three hundred sixty-third Hunger Games.

Misty was in too much shock to cry. And Neptune was driven out—the bird mutts chased him in a squawking, feathery flock.

_He won't make it. He doesn't want to anymore._

Misty tried to continue with her life outside of watching. It was over for them, now. How much had she really seen them? No. It didn't matter.

(But she did watch when Neptune died, going down fighting against three Careers, knives sticking out of his lifeless, emaciated body everywhere. Misty cringed. She was an only child. Neptune was the closest thing to a brother that she'd ever have.)

**. . . . .**

Neptune and Angel had taught her to care, to _live. _She never forgot them. Not Neptune's wry smile or Angel's giggle. Not how Neptune let his ice cream melt halfway before he ate it or how Angel carefully wove and braided their three friendship bracelets.

She didn't make any more close friends in the districts.

But years and tragedies and years and divorces and years and children and years later, it was still them that she called out for at night.

**END**


	2. Learn How to Assure

**Trigger Warnings: Parental Mental/Emotional Neglect/Abuse, Bullying, Mental Illness – Depression, Self-Harm**

* * *

**Chapter Two: Learn How to Assure**

_Kaye Lina Amicus, Year 396, Capitol_

Kaye got an A on her art portfolio for first semester. She was happy—she'd agonized over it for weeks, fixing the things from early on in the year, where she was still adjusting to high school (even if not much'd changed, the private school had all grades), and it showed. She worked hard on it; it was good; she deserved that A, just like all of her others.

Clutching the book and the paper with the rubric on it against her, she all but skipped home from the bus stop. She couldn't stop smiling. She wasn't sure why—of course, she cared about the grade, yet this felt more important than that—but she was glad for something good happening. (Since she finally got to leave home to go to school—fifth grade, the beginning of middle school, there, she just hadn't… fit in. High school showed that, especially. They called her worse things every year when she'd done nothing to them, and the school transition only made that a bigger jump. But even those not involved wouldn't say anything in her favor.)

She got to her building's gate, swiped the first card on her keychain, got to the door, swiped the second, a pass code at the elevator, an actual key to the apartment door. She'd stopped noticing it, but subconsciously did think it was somewhat ridiculous. (But it helped at night; that's what mattered.)

She closed it behind her hastily, looking around one of the main rooms, calling, "Mom! Guess what? You remember the art proj—?"

"—Shush!" came the oddly-harsh answer when she finally found the office her mother was in. "I have to make a call."

"But, Mom, I got an—"

"—Whatever it is, it can wait. Stop making a racket and go entertain yourself."

"You said you wanted—"

"—It can wait. Abigail can make you a snack if you're hungry. Go on."

Suddenly heavy-hearted, looking at the ground, she mumbled an apology and shuffled out of the room. She headed downstairs, never understanding the building's layout, and found her father, as expected, in his lab. She tried to regain her earlier enthusiasm. "Hi, Dad, so today I got the art project back and—"

"Oh, I'm sorry, it's just, bad timing—can't you tell me later?"

"Well I just wanted to say that—"

"Please, can it wait till dinner?"

She sighed. "Dinner" never came. Another mumbled apology, and she went back upstairs to her room. She lets her backpack fall to the floor, tossed the folder and rubric under her bed. Thinking about it more now, maybe the project was only important to _her. _And it probably wasn't _that_ good, anyway.

**. . . . .**

"But you were so eager to find out about that grade—shouldn't you be happy?" Mr. Z asked her in first period the next morning. English. She wasn't terrible at it. She thought. (Most of the time.)

"I am," she half-mumbled, and tried to smile. If anything, she could because it was the first actual conversation she'd had in a while. Mr. Z was one of the only teachers that seemed to have noticed her problems with the other kids, tried to talk to her every once in a while, just so she could pretend that someone in school cared. (Someone _at all_, cared.) But she'd learned that at what was always the wrong moment, he could snap back into "teacher"-mode, and snap when she needed someone to talk to.

She tried to not start the conversations too often. But could she help it if she needed—?

"—Really?" he asked.

Kaye shrugged.

**. . . . .**

The rest of the day was long. In her last class that day, Gym, they started their basketball unit, so one of _those_ girls who just particularly liked to torment her kept trying to "accidentally" aim her passes too high when they were assigned as partners for practice. She succeeded once towards the end, and for a second Kaye was dizzy, numb at the impact, and stumbled a second.

She tossed it back, pretended she didn't care. She would let them have their fun, better her than someone else, and there was nothing to do about it, but….

The practicing ended. The coaches weren't pleased with the effort levels of the day. They ran back and forth across the gym a lot because of it—until Kaye was _tired_and dizzier and her head was really starting to hurt—and then the same girl managed to trip her, and she hit the ground the wrong way and went sliding across the floor. It stung, the scrapes pricking, but she forced herself back up, ran, pretending that it was just exertion, not more tears in her eyes. She got ready to go home quickly, ran for the bus, curled up in her usual spot, hid her crying in her backpack.

She got home, pretended she went to change out of her uniform as an excuse to get to close her bedroom door, just wanting to be alone, left alone for just a few seconds, _please, great Panem_, pulled her old teddy bear out from under her pillow, clutched it, the closest thing she'd gotten to a hug in a long, long time, and cried.

Her parents wanted her to get rid of the thing, it was old and dusty and tattered and _Wouldn't a new one be so much better?_ But she didn't want a new one. It would have none of the memories and none of the comfort level and they'd _just _the beginning of this past year convinced her to not carry it in her school backpack every day.

It was the closest thing to a friend she has, at this point.

**. . . . .**

Beginning of March. Almost time to start thinking about the next school year. She hated to do it; she spent all those years pleading with her parents to enroll her in an actual school, but… it had to be worth asking. Anything, had to be better than this.

She asked about going back to homeschooling. About changing schools. About trying public school. Something. _Anything._ Really. Apparently, only the first was even vaguely considered safe enough.

"But you wanted to 'actually' go to school so badly," her mother said, looking at a computer screen and not at her.

"I know," Kaye whispered. "I'm sorry. I just… I didn't know what it would be like, I really—"

"—You looked at all the flyers. We went to all the orientations. You had to know."

"I… didn't really know the people," she tried. "I just—no one likes me there—"

"—Then give them a reason to like you."

Oh. _Oh. _That… hurt. More than she would've expected it to, actually. She just kind of froze, heart stopping, numb and still and unable to process for a second. _Give them a reason to like you. _But she had—hadn't she? Every day, she'd tried, she'd done _so much_, to try and get them to… to even just hate her _less. _She'd been sweet and gentle and kind to them, and this was what she got for it. _Give them a reason to like you._

"I—I—" _can't do any more._

She whipped around, ran into her room, into the adjoining bathroom, closed the door, started to hyperventilate. What else was she supposed to _do_? What did they _want_? She just wanted—a place where—maybe—she could just have—a friend, that was all—that all she'd asked for.

She tried to take a deep breath in, and it turned into a shaky, choked exhale ending with more sobbing. (She didn't know how she hadn't run out of tears, lately.)

Clutching the bathroom counter to stay upright, head spinning with questions, she opened a drawer, then froze for a few seconds, but her hand closed around a hair clip with a rather pointy edge, ran it across her left wrist. She'd thought about doing it before, maybe it would help.

Oh, how could it make things that much worse?

**. . . . .**

It got worse.

A few people'd started to notice that she seemed worse. She got paranoid about people finding out, and because except when she was driven to it she didn't _like _doing it, she avoided people who gave her reasons to. Which seemed to be everyone. They gave her criticisms to take out on herself, and she tried to avoid them.

She wore long sleeves a lot—whenever the scars were fresh. She said she felt sick and had chills and she was just cold and she was fine.

But she got sick of telling those lies.

Finals were approaching. She knew they'd be more stressful than ever, and she would find more reasons to do _this, _than ever. She needed to stop. But every time she decided to, she lost her resolve. It helped—so why should she?

But she knew it didn't. She just couldn't make herself deal with it.

She kept thinking of telling someone. But she couldn't. If she told someone, they'd look down on her more, and then she'd have more reasons to continue. One day, after school, when she thought she was going into one of those weeks where she did it every night, she worked up all of her nerve, and went into her mom's office.

"… Mom, I… I… have something to… to tell… you… I—"

Her mom held up one hand, gesturing to wait. She typed something furiously.

After a few minutes of this, Kaye shifted from foot to foot. "Mom, it's… it's just… I… it's kind of… kind of… important—"

Clearly agitated, her mother went through some of the usual questions. _Is the house on fire? _(Well, no.) _Is anyone dying? _(Only on the inside.) _Is something broken that needs to quickly be fixed? _(No. _Me._)

By the end of the questions, she just whispered, "Sorry," and left, resolve gone. She'd looked at all the self-help websites by now. They all said, basically, to seek help from other people at this point.

None of them said what to do if they didn't listen when you asked for help.

(She assumed the unspoken answer, then, is, "Give up," and went to find something sharp.)

**. . . . .**

It was a stupid idea to look for help, anyway.

This was the only thing that made her feel better, and now she was trying to get them to take it away. Because that was just what she was used to. Maybe it was the wrong idea; maybe it was masochistic, but… everyone else said it was right.

On a more-hopeful day, a day when Mr. Z actually talked to her and she'd almost gotten the urge to maybe tell him about this—but then she realized she didn't want this news to be at school—she worked up her nerve again.

So her mom wasn't going to help. She'd try her dad.

Now, she was scared. She knew how bad things got the last time, after help didn't come once. But twice? Could she deal with that?

It took her hours, pacing in her room, to work up her nerve, stomach twisted into knots. But she couldn't find him anywhere. She asked Abigail. _He's not home. _

He. Wasn't. Home.

All this, all those nerves and trembles, and… he wasn't home. She wasn't going to maintain her resolve until he got back.

What now?

**. . . . .**

She lost all resolve to go to her parents about it. Everything she did around them was wrong.

She decided, then, that she had to go to someone at school. There was the one obvious choice, although she should've just gone to the counselor who was occasionally there. But she didn't know them, and so ignored that option.

She might as well make this as easy as she could on herself.

She got to class as early as she could, considering she took the bus. She was always early, but it was on purpose, today. "Mr. Z, can I… talk to you about… something?" she asked, trying to pretend she wasn't shaking.

"Of course," he said, swiveling his chair so he faced her. "What is it?"

That answer caught her so off-guard that she stammered around her own answer for a second. No yelling, no interruptions, no "go entertain yourself". "I—I have this… problem," she said, and knew she was being horribly vague but maybe if she stalled enough, she'd be able to get the words out by the time she got there. "I keep… I—I'm kind of… addicted, to doing this… thing, and it's bad, and… I need to stop, but I… I don't know how." She faltered. "And I need help."

Mr. Z seemed surprised. "And what exactly is this 'thing'?" he prompted, gently.

"I—well—I… I've been… I started… to… _I started cutting myself and I don't want to but I don't know how to stop and I'm scared of what'll happen if I don't and no one will listen when I try to tell them and I need help._" The end came out in a jumble, but her English teacher only nodded.

The first thing he said was, "It's going to be okay," and she felt less like she was drowning.

**. . . . .**

She talked to someone in the front office whose name she wasn't sure of, whose job she wasn't sure of, but she told the whole story, answered some questions. They had to tell her parents, they said, and Kaye nodded. She expected that much. Maybe they'd like listening to whoever this person was better than they did her.

The person called her parents. At first, the line was busy. They got through and said that they needed to have a conference straightaway, that it was a medical problem, and—no, she wasn't currently having an issue—you couldn't send your _maid_ to do it instead—no—what?

They came in eventually, and they weren't happy, to put it nicely.

Kaye was lost again.

**END**


	3. Learn How to Leave

**Trigger Warnings: Poverty, Mental Illness (Ambiguous), Large Families**

* * *

**Chapter Three: Learn How to Leave**

_Francisco Clandestine, Year 394, District Five_

Francisco was not good with emotion.

Neither, really, was Ana Myne.

No teenagers were.

He had recently turned sixteen, so it was January. Halfway through his sophomore year of high school, and he had long since settled into his lonesome high school habits. The job that he had after school was just not long enough after the last bell for him to go home and go there, nor was it short enough for him to go straight to work.

So what he did was walk, and go the long way, through the shabby community park, where he started to learn everything about the area, doing a muscle-memory walk. And one thing he could count on was the high-pitched shriek of metal on metal coming from an old swing set that wasn't too far off the path he walked.

Not many children actually went to that park. No, it was always one girl on the swing, the other one always empty. The same girl, every day, who looked like she was from the right part of town, didn't look that much different from Francisco himself, had similar light-brown eyes, although her hair was a dark, dark chocolate-brown.

And it was always tangled and whipping around her face while she swung, in quick, almost violent movements.

Weeks after he'd started working, he'd never said anything to her, never acknowledged her, but had finally started to notice her constant presence—and made up things about her inside his head, the main thing being that perhaps she was mentally disabled and unable to act like anything but a child.

Or maybe she was just younger than she looked, although she did look quite young, short and skinny.

Then he started being able to swear that she had a twin running around in the hallways at his school, and was surprised that she was high school aged. The girl he saw at school, he found out, was a freshman, so that made some sense.

But what about the girl in the park?

One day he was walking down the dusty old path again, and couldn't help calling, "Hey! Do you go to Desert Oasis?"

The girl didn't seem to hear him, and he repeated himself. She gave him a look—not exactly a glare, although if he was in a worse mood he would've been able to call it that—just a strange one, and dragged her torn sneakers through the dust under the swing, slowing down somewhat. "Yeah," she said, quiet, and didn't quite stop swinging. She didn't say anything else.

"So do I," he said. "I just thought I saw you around there."

She shrugged, and resumed swinging. He walked on.

They didn't talk again for weeks. He kept walking past her every day, and every few days he would nod. Every few days of those days, she would notice and nod back. One time he waved, and she tried to wave back, but her balance was poor and she almost fell off the swing.

He didn't say anything.

Then they started nodding to each other in the hallway, and having someone that he felt obliged to acknowledge when he saw them felt like an almost unwelcome responsibility. Almost.

But it made his walking to work from school more enjoyable.

He didn't have many friends because he wasn't good with words, so this girl was easy to feel connected to: they didn't talk. She didn't seem to have friends, either, and looked slightly out of place when she wasn't on the old swing set.

He walked by one day and she wasn't there. He felt oddly worried, even though he didn't—wait, he didn't know her name. Great Panem, he really was bad with people. He'd never asked.

He resolved to, when he saw her again, and the next day, even though it was Saturday and his only day off from school and work, he walked through the park. He was curious if she went there on the weekends, too.

She did.

He stopped on the path and they repeated the look-and-kind-of-stop-swinging-awkward-quiet pattern. "You weren't here yesterday," he said.

She shrugged. She did that a lot.

_Well, great, _he thought. The only person who was worse at this than he was. "Why not?" he asked.

"I was sick," she said.

He nodded, and he walked away. After, he thought, _damn it. _He hadn't asked her name. And he didn't, for several days, because he felt like they couldn't talk more often than that, although that felt ridiculous.

Then he stopped one day. "Do you have a name?" _That was a stupid question. _"I mean, what _is _your name?"

"Ana," she said.

When no answering question came, he said, "I'm Francisco," and they left it at that. As he walked away, he wanted to say _nice to meet you too, _but didn't want to already start with the insulting of a person who he hadn't blocked out yet.

They continued their lives for almost two weeks, before it was a Saturday and Francisco was bored, so he found himself wandering towards the park, oddly enough seeking company. "[Do you] mind if I join you?"

"Sure."

He sat down on the other swing and didn't actually move much, just thinking. "Why are you always here?"

She took a bit of time to answer. "I like it," she said finally, indicating that that was the end of that conversation.

He had a lot more questions, but he didn't ask those, and after a while he got up and left without saying goodbye.

Winter was long that year, a cold and bitter one given the usual climate. It was odd for the desert area. But everyday she was outside. With winter, her sneakers changed into dirty gray, tattered faux-fur boots. She wore a jacket of the same color and a hat made with loose crochet stitches, fingerless gloves and a scarf that looked like the same person as the hat had made it.

But none of them were well made, and she looked chilly.

He asked about it: "Don't you ever get cold?"

Ana shrugged.

It took him a few more days to work up the nerve to ask the real question: "Do you wanna go get a hot chocolate or something?"

She said yes.

**. . . . .**

Francisco and Ana were in a café. It was the first real conversation they'd ever had; the walk there had been oddly awkward.

They both got a hot chocolate (he hadn't liked coffee for the longest time, until it was all that kept him awake as a Gamemaker). "So," he said.

Something like the beginning of a smile came over her face. "So?"

"It's cold out."

The weather. A good, natural topic, of course.

Ana shrugged.

"It's just… you like being outside, still."

"It's not that bad."

"Well, to tolerate, but I don't know why you seek it out." He didn't like the tone that had crept into his own voice. He sounded almost angry, and he didn't mean to. Just curious, and Ana was frustratingly reserved.

"I like the swing," she said simply, like a child, like it was the end of the subject.

Francisco decided that this girl had to be mentally ill somehow and yet he was on what most sane people (not that he was one, either) a date with her. "Fair enough," he said, and for a few minutes they both sipped at their drinks and didn't say anything. "Doesn't anyone care that you're never home, though?"

"I do go home," she said. "But they get it. It's just peaceful."

"More peaceful than being at home?"

"I guess."

"Why?" Great Panem, he had to prompt everything, potentially uncomfortable topics and all.

"Six younger siblings," she smiled. "Two under the age of five. The next oldest is eleven."

"Oh," he said. He tried to think of something to say to connect to that. "I have one little brother. Mahon. He's eleven, too."

"Mm." Ana was quiet a few minutes, drinking her hot chocolate, apparently fascinated by swirling it around in the styrofoam cup. "Well, the drinks here are good. I haven't come here before."

"Really?"

"No. Is that so strange?"

"I don't know. It's just one of the only places around here, really."

"I don't go to any places around here, really," she said, and he wasn't sure if the words were supposed to be mocking him in a way or not.

"I don't, either. But even I've been here." And there was that tone again. He was really getting angry with himself inside his mind, now. "Maybe we should come back some day."

She looked up at him, partially as if he'd gone out of his mind. "We should," she said, as if she doubted that he had been serious. She looked as if no one had ever proposed wanting to see her again after they had met her.

(It would take them three years to date properly, but that didn't all matter too much. It killed him to leave, especially for the Games, but Ana was never all _right_ and their relationship was too odd and it was really his only chance.)

But Francisco was different.

He always tended to be different.

_ That_ would never change.

**END**


	4. Learn How to Love

**Trigger Warnings: Violence, Night Terrors, Abusive Relationship, Alcoholism, Parental Abuse/Neglect (Physical, Emotional), Underage Forced Prostitution, Mental Illness – Depression, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Nervous Breakdown, Agoraphobia, Paranoid Schizophrenia, Self-Harm, Suicidal Tendencies**

* * *

**Chapter Four: Learn How to Love**

_Clarissa "Glisten" Navdeep, Year 377, Capitol_

November 4th, Games Year 377. Claire was fine then, even almost calm in the hours after her only child was born. A girl, a bit small and pale, with, according to her birth certificate, red hair and gray eyes. Everything was fine—they could go home.

But Claire wasn't happy. _Post-partum depression, _said the doctors. A few psychotic symptoms, but nothing to worry about.

But a few months later, the breakdown came. Then, agoraphobia, paranoid schizophrenia, like none of the local doctors had ever seen before, although several disorders ran in the family. The parents couldn't really afford to keep going to them, anyway; they were never well off.

Algos, the father, was patient for a while, and then he snapped, too, and started drinking. Taking care of the unstable Claire, himself, raising a newborn baby, working multiple jobs, maintaining the house… it was too much. By the time the baby, Clarissa, was one year old, the patient side was gone, and her survival was most likely a miracle.

**. . . . .**

Glisten (well, Clarissa, then) always waited for a few minutes outside with her class when the bell rang, when everyone else's parents came to pick them up. She just watched, putting off facing home, much as the teachers tried to shoo her. It wasn't like they wanted her, either. Her grades were perfect but her attendance was awful and no one ever got attached to her.

She didn't want to go home. There was nothing there for her except for the wooden shards of a destroyed crib in her empty, drafty room on the same wooden floor. Never enough food, even if she could have gotten to it.

She watched another girl in her class run over to her father, who had a greeting smile, and squeal, "Daddy!" while the man swung her around once.

_Oh, _Glisten thought. _That looked… like fun._ She guessed. She wouldn't really know. But they were both laughing.

The teacher told her to get going, again. She looked at the ground and wrung her hands and mumbled, "Okay," and finally shuffled away from the school. She _prayedprayedprayed _that the belt tonight wouldn't be the half that had the buckle.

(But the world didn't feel like pretending to be nice to her today.)

The metal bit into her skin, and she shrieked while it ripped at her, but no one dried her tears or protected her or smiled or swung her around once.

She was seven then.

**. . . . .**

Years later, she was a few days shy of seventeen when she came home to find the house all but destroyed. Her parents had strewn furniture about like children's toys and started up a fire from the stove. There was screaming and more things being thrown so she turned and ran.

She wandered for hours, the evening cold and damp. She found herself at the always-open library, at a table in the back. At first she just sat there, numb, wondering what she was supposed to do if she was going through with this. She'd said that she was going to so many times before, but she'd never gotten far. This time felt different. She couldn't go back.

Hours after everyone else had left, she still sat there, unsure of where else to go, until everything started to hit her and she put her head down and just sobbed, enough that the head of the librarian night crew came over and set a box of tissues next to her and asked if there was anything she could do.

Glisten shook her head and didn't look up.

Dawn came, but she didn't go to school; instead, she set out across the city for the only other living family she knew of: Calandra. An orphaned cousin on her mom side, three years older, shy and kind with dark hair hiding the face so much like her little cousin's.

Glisten wasn't one for begging, but she pleaded her way into having a place to stay, and made all kinds of promises, which she eventually kept: she took on a part-time job to pay her part of the rent, and stayed out of the way, much as she was sometimes tempted to talk.

The girls had their problems. Glisten's "half" of the rent just wasn't enough even though it was all of the minimum wage, and she woke Calandra up at night with her constant night terrors from the past, screams echoing in the apartment's halls.

So she tested out of school a year early that June to get a full-time job at the same company, and left, for somewhere she could stay on her own. College would have to wait for the year.

**. . . . .**

It was so cold. Glisten was sure that she had never been so cold in her life, not even that time she got locked out of the house for the night and it had snowed. (That was her tenth birthday present, unknowingly.) It was (the _definition of_) _pouring_ rain, and she could easily wring the equivalent of a bucket of water out of her ponytail and old clothes given five minutes, soaked to the skin. She had barely slept for days, dark circles ringing her eyes, having failed to pay her rent (once again) and being on the streets (once again). It happened from time to time.

But she was okay. (She kept telling herself that.) She refused to go back to Calandra, who she had left just a few months ago.

So now she was curled up on a bench, starving, freezing, soaking wet, exhausted, sick, feeling phantom pain creep up along all of the old scars. She wept, feeling like she was still the scared little girl who had never been called anything but worthless, who had nothing but her daydreams to keep her company, who knew nothing but hurt from others.

Someone approached her. She wasn't sure exactly what happened that night. But for once she had a warm meal and a bed under a roof and dry, clean clothes.

It was a bribe, one that _he_—a pimp, she found out, working shadily through a Capitol nightclub—would never actually show her again, replaced by heated wire hangers and johns. But of course, she clung to it.

He was usually too high to notice anything else she did. As long as quotas were filled, he was "happy". So she secretly had her job, and over time, college on scholarship, an internship at the Gamemaking Center. (It was there she met Ritter—but she had many secrets from him.) She was just smart enough and just used to exhaustion enough to keep it up.

She tried to avoid recognition when that started. She changed her name. (That was when she became Glisten, a mocking of the better half of the Capitol, an irony—it wasn't like anyone in the stable knew what it was.) She dyed her hair, despite the punishment for it that came out of surprise once it was noticed. (Pink, partly also mocking, although, like the name, it stuck.)

**. . . . .**

At "some point", she graduated. She got a job as a Gamemaker, and quit her former day job. (And the night job. Suddenly one of the most powerful people in the city, there weren't so many questions as there could've been.)

Everything had changed but she felt like she still had the same old problems—the therapists called it "depression" and "post-traumatic stress disorder". She called it "I hate myself" and "I want to die", and smirked as she said, "To put it eloquently."

**END**


End file.
